"Do you think ghosts see what goes on after they are dead?" asked
Mercy.
"The ghosts are not dead," said Ian, "and I can't tell. But I am inclined to think some ghosts have to stay a while and look on."
"What would be the good of that?" returned Mercy.
"Perhaps to teach them the little good they were in, or got out of the world," he answered. "To have to stick to a thing after it is dead, is terrible, but may teach much."
"I don't understand you," said Mercy. "The world is not dead!"
"Better and better!" thought Ian with himself. "The girl CAN understand!—A thing is always dead to you when you have done with it," he answered her. "Suppose you had a ball-dress crumpled and unsightly—the roses on it withered, and the tinsel shining hideously through them—would it not be a dead dress?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Then suppose, for something you had done, or for something you would not stop being, you had to wear that ball-dress till something came about—you would be like the ghosts that cannot get away.—Suppose, when you were old and wrinkled,—"
"You are very amusing, Captain Macruadh!" said Christina, with a bell-like laugh. But Ian went on.
"Some stories tell us of ghosts with the same old wrinkled faces in which they died. The world and its uses over, they are compelled to haunt it still, seeing how things go but taking no share in them beholding the relief their death is to all, feeling they have lost their chance of beauty, and are fixed in ugliness, having wasted being itself! They are like a man in a miserable dream, in which he can do nothing, but in which he must stay, and go dreaming, dreaming on without hope of release. To be in a world and have nothing to do with it, must be awful! A little more imagination would do some people good!"